The other day in Tesco several Spanish people were buying some groceries, including a can of Pear Cider. When asked for ID the girl to the fore of the group produced her Spanish national ID card, which was refused as valid ID. In order to purchase alcohol at Tesco one must have a Garda National Age Card or a passport.

Seeing as how one doesn’t need a passport to travel within the EU, many French, Spanish, Polish and other European folk living or visiting here don’t have one, they have their national ID cards, and they don’t have a Garda National Age card.

In fact, a member of staff in tesco told me that they had heard of the Gardai telling people they were too old to get the Age Card.

So anyway, the Spanish ID card not being the right kind of ID, two other members of the group produced Passports, however the group were still denied their one can of Pear Cider because apparently it is the law that if someone tries to purchase alcohol with the wrong kind of ID, another person cannot then purchase that alcohol.

A member of tesco’s staff further explained that the individuals with passports would not be served alcohol if they came back to the store on their own. When asked within what timeframe, they replied ‘probably the rest of the day’.

Now, I understand where these well intentioned rules are coming from, but when put into practise it’s completely crazy.

It seems that the Tesco store policy is as a result of a deal they struck with the Gardai in order to be allowed to sell alcohol.

I don’t know much about alcohol laws, but it seems insane to me that this was a deal that was haggled out with the Gardai. Surely there must be some standard laws in place which would cover supermarket licences?

A member of Tesco staff admitted that this policy is a pain in the ass for Tesco as they constantly have to deal with both foreign nationals and students who are old enough to buy alcohol but don’t have the correct id with them.

It results in a certain amount of loss of sales as people who are refused alcohol often abandon the rest of their groceries too and leave to purchase elswhere.

I couldn’t find much information about store policies online, so I sent an email to customer.services@tesco.ie on the 04/08/08. No answer yet.

I summed up my email by saying:

1. I would like to confirm that EU Country’s National ID Cards are
   not valid ID’s for purchase of Alcohol at Tesco.
2. If this is true, I would like to lodge an official complaint that
   EU Country’s National ID Cards are not valid ID’s for purchase of
   Alcohol at Tesco.
3. I would like to enquire as to how this policy might be changed -
   ie what can the consumer do to push for it to be ammended.
4. I would like to understand more about why Tesco has a different
   policy to other Off Licences.

Feel free to copy and paste

This coming Saturday, a friend of mine is organising a Charity Texas Hold’em Poker Tournament in the Bank Casino on Father Mathew street to raise money for the Zimbabwean branch of Serve (serve.ie).

Should be great fun… I’ll be there, and we need to spread the word for a last push to get a few more bodies involved, so if you could let people know any way you can that would be great!

Full details on the Facebook event page or you can email charitypokerevent@gmail.com to register your interest, or to get more details.

Please spread the word!

So it’s looking like the No’s have it. If so, what will happen next? Will they have the balls to pull another Nice on it? I think they wish they could…

I voted No to Lisbon, but I had some reservations. Donncha led me to this post by Deb on Lisbon which I thought was a really good post on why she was voting No - worth a read, but I’ll quote a bit:

Voting no does not say no to Europe. It says “Oi, Brussels, this is a load of shite, now get back there and come up with something that makes sense.”

Yes, we realise it’s not an easy job, but just because your job is difficult doesn’t mean we have to accept what your offering us now! Go sort it out, and No we won’t vote again because we got it ‘wrong’.

Thanks to Walter for the idea of lolling Martin. If you feel like stealing it you can, or use our bandwidth by using this code with a link back to here:

<a href="http://bifsniff.com"><img src="http://bifsniff.com/wp-content/files/2008/06/lolmartin.jpg" alt="i can haz anuther go?" title="lolmartin" width="450" height="302" /></a>

Today FM’s The Last Word with Matt Cooper is having a Lisbon Treaty special this evening. From 16:30-19:00 they will be hosting a live debate from Dublin Castle.

It’ll be interesting anyway…

Picked up the Irish Independant today somewhere and had a flick through it. I found an article in it which was making a lot of the same points I made yesterday in my Lisbon post… here’s the Independent article: ‘Pro-treatyites need to give Breakfast Roll Man something he can digest easily‘

To date, the ‘Yes’ campaign appeared to be intent on giving reasons not to vote ‘No’, rather than why to vote ‘Yes’. [...] …rather than trying to constantly debate the Treaty with the ‘No’ camp and getting drawn into rows about outrageous claims, the ‘Yes’ side needs to start emphasising its own message. The only way to get the soft ‘Yes’ vote out is to give them something they’ll understand.

The article went on to say that Willie O’Dea explained they had to fight the No myths they encounter on the doorsteps, but in my opinion, if the Yes vote had started their campaign earlier the No myths might not have been so prevalent.

meanwhile, heard on Twitter…

If I were spending money to secure a YES vote, I’d give it to these fucking lunatics we see campaigning for NO.

It’s funny because it’s true - but don’t let the lunatics make you vote Yes for the wrong reasons.

I found another great article in the Independant, entitled ‘I’ll be voting No for sake of democracy’

Go and read it, it’s a good one - here are the crucial points:

First of all, let’s recall that the Treaty is really the same as the constitution that was rejected by the voters of France and Holland. It has been dolled up and this time, no one in the EU apart from us gets the chance to vote on it. This, alone, is fantastically undemocratic and is reason on its own to vote against it.

Secondly, the Nice Treaty was supposed to be the legal document that tweaked the institutions of the EU so as to accommodate all those extra members, and then they have the nerve to use the enlargement of the EU to foist another treaty (constitution) on us?

[...]

Third, there is the Charter of Fundamental Rights. [...] the Charter’s interpretation of rights will override our own interpretation of those same rights. That is not democratic.

Finally, the Charter will ultimately be interpreted by the immensely powerful judges of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

If we don’t like a judgment of our own Supreme Court, we can reverse it through a referendum. If we don’t like a judgment of the ECJ, there is nothing practical we can do about it. We will be stuck with it. That is also undemocratic. Radically so. Judges should never, ever, be given that much power.Don’t give it to them. Vote ‘No’.

Oh, and an interesting quote from the first article I mentioned

Just two weeks out from polling day and within Leinster House, several Fianna Fail and Fine Gael TDs, with their noses to the ground, privately predicted in recent days that the referendum would be lost if it were held right now, rather than on June 12.

It goes on to point out that last years general election, held ten days earlier, would have had a very different result - but it shows that if you are thinking of voting No and you want a No result in the referendum, keep the pressure on - you’re ahead at the moment!

Finally, you’re probably wondering what the image at the top of the post was all about. Well it’s a picture, also from today’s Independant, picturing Micheal Martin, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and director of the Fianna Fail referendum campaign, giving himself a pep talk before a press briefing at The Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin yesterday: